An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases, all matters medical, and some not so medical.

June 19th, 2016

ID Cartoon Caption Contest

The New Yorker magazine is justifiably famous for its fine writing, with its contributors a veritable Who’s Who of famous authors and journalists of the past century. Truman Capote, Ann Beattie, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, John Updike, Dorothy Parker, E.B. White, Philip Roth, Alice Munro, John Hersey, Malcolm Gladwell, Roger Angell, James Thurber … you get the idea.

But for many (OK, I admit it, often for me), it’s mostly just a print vessel for the cartoons. These offer some of the most brilliant commentaries on the world you will find anywhere — witty, profound, whimsical, silly — and my web browser has this link bookmarked in case I’m feeling glum.

The magazine also has a Cartoon Caption Contest, in which readers contribute captions for a drawing that changes weekly. I’ve entered the contest dozens of times, and have won the same number of times as I’ve won Wimbledon.

Oh well. You might think this brilliant entry could have done the trick:

“I need the miles.”

I share this low success rate with my sister Anne, who in my unbiased opinion should have won with this one:

“You were right — I’m STILL not free.”

Admittedly motivated by our failure, we hereby offer our own ID Cartoon Caption Contest. The drawing is Anne’s (I’ve featured her art before), and it was inspired by a certain white coat controversy.

Submit your caption either in the comments section, to my Twitter feed, or if you want to keep it secret, email me at id.caption@yahoo.com.

We’ll judge them on funniness using only the most highly objective and scientific criteria. In addition to widespread fame, the winner will receive a free lifelong subscription to this blog.